In this major work on landscape photography, extensively illustrated in colour and black & white, Liz Wells is concerned with the ways in which photographers engage with issues about land, its representation and idealisation. She demonstrates how the visual interpretation of land as landscape reflects and reinforces contemporary political, social and environmental attitudes. She also asks what is at stake in landscape photography now through placing critical appraisal of key examples of work by photographers working in, for example, the USA, in Europe, Scandinavia and Baltic areas, within broader art historical and political concerns. This illuminating book will interest readers in photography and media, geography, art history and travel, as well as those concerned with environmental issues.

About the Author

Liz Wells writes and lectures on photographic practices. She is editor of The Photography Reader, 2003 and Photography: A Critical Introduction, 2004, 3rd ed. (4th edition, 2009); also co-editor of photographies, Routledge journals (issue 1, Spring 2008). Co-edited publications include Liz Wells and Simon Standing Change, 2007, and Surface, 2005, University of Plymouth Press; Liz Wells, Kate Newton and Catherine Fehily, Shifting Horizons, Women's Landscape Photography Now, 2000, I.B.Tauris. Revent exhibitions as curator include Crossing the Atlantic - Uneasy Spaces, New York, Sept - Nov. 2006, and Facing East, Contemporary Landscape Photography from Baltic Areas, UK tour 2004 - 2007.